The morning after the Bone Singer's retreat should have brought peace.
Instead, it brought fire.
The cursed lantern still burned in the square. A single floating flame—violet and blue—refusing to go out, though no fuel fed it, no wick held it. The villagers had tried to douse it with water, smother it with cloth, bury it in salt.
Nothing worked.
Some whispered it was an omen. Others said it was a gift. A few simply fled.
But Tellen, ever curious, had a different theory. "That isn't a lantern," he said, crouching beside it. "It's a memory."
Arjuna stood a few paces behind, arms folded. "A memory of what?"
Tellen glanced at him, thoughtful. "Of someone who should've been forgotten. Someone whose story doesn't want to end."
That night, the lantern pulsed.
It cast flickering shapes on the village walls—images like a dream barely recalled: a battlefield under twin moons, a woman in black robes wreathed in flame, a knight kneeling before a broken altar.
Arjuna didn't speak. He only stared.
And then the lantern began to move.
It floated, slowly, toward the edge of the village—down the path that led into the drowned woods.
The villagers barred their doors.
Tellen grabbed his journal, already scribbling. "Well, I wasn't planning to follow a haunted soul-light into a forest of dead things today, but here we are."
They followed the lantern beneath twisted trees and brittle branches, frost crackling beneath their boots. The deeper they went, the quieter the world became—no birds, no wind, not even breath.
At last, they came to a clearing. Half-buried stones jutted from the ground like crooked teeth. Old graves.
The lantern hovered above one of them.
Its flame flared… and took form.
A girl.
Not the masked child from before.
This one was older—perhaps sixteen—her hair braided with funeral thread, her eyes wide with sorrow and clarity beyond her years.
Arjuna froze.
He knew her.
Not from memory—but from feeling.
"I waited," she whispered. "You said you'd come back."
Tellen whispered, "This... this is a revenant memory. A tethered echo. Gods, this is rare."
Arjuna took a step closer.
"What was your name?" he asked, but even as he said it, he knew the answer would vanish from his mind the moment it was spoken.
Still, she smiled.
"You gave me a name once. Then forgot it."
She looked past him, to the sword at his side.
"You weren't always like this. You used to be kind. You used to laugh. You used to promise things."
The lantern pulsed again.
And then the grave beneath her cracked.
A hand reached up from the dirt.
Rotting. Twisted. Burning blue.
The girl didn't flinch.
"He wants you to forget," she said, looking at the hand. "He feeds on forgetting. That's how the Vow lives. But you… you used to fight him."
The revenant flame collapsed back into the lantern.
The grave split open.
A figure climbed out—no face, no features, only a body made of ash and ember.
It raised a blade that looked like Arjuna's.
And charged.
Steel clashed with memory.
This version of Arjuna didn't speak, didn't breathe. It fought like instinct. Like fury. Like all the broken promises and forgotten names given form.
The sword sang, sparks flying in the air like stars. Tellen scrambled behind a gravestone, muttering curses and notes. The revenant fought savagely—like it wanted to die, but couldn't.
Then Arjuna struck true.
Not at the chest.
At the lantern.
The moment the sword pierced it, the light flared white.
A scream echoed—not in the air, but in him. A scream of lost vows and buried love.
And then… silence.
The lantern went out.
The revenant collapsed.
And the girl was gone.
Only one thing remained in the grave: a single braid of black hair, tied with red thread.
Arjuna knelt, touching it gently.
"She was real," he whispered.
Tellen stepped forward, cautious. "Who was she?"
"I don't remember," Arjuna said.
"But I will."
Far away, atop a mountain of bone and dusk, Nyssara paused mid-prayer.
She turned her head, as though hearing something long lost.
"…He remembers the girl."
She did not smile.
But her flame burned brighter.